‘The Visitor’ Confused Audiences (Exclusive Clip)!

Drafthouse Films, in conjunction with Cinedigm, will bring two of its recent theatrical success stories to Blu-ray and DVD in restored and remastered editions: the wildly ambitious and neglected sci-fi/horror epic The Visitor and Ms. 45, legendary director Abel Ferrara’s gritty, gore-filled New York revenge thriller. The films will arrive, respectively, on March 4 and on March 25.

In The Visitor, which we now have an exclusive clip from, “John Huston plays an intergalactic warrior who joins a cosmic Christ figure in battle against a demonic 8-year-old girl and her pet hawk, while the fate of the universe hangs in the balance. Multidimensional warfare, pre-adolescent profanity and brutal avian attacks combine to transport the viewer to a state unlike anything they’ve experienced – somewhere between hell, the darkest reaches of outer space and … Atlanta.”

Incredibly ambitious but derided and largely neglected upon its initial release in 1979, The Visitor is an unforgettable assault on reality, a phantasmagoric sci-fi/horror/action hybrid. From writer-producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (Tentacles) and director/actor/body builder Michael J. Paradise (aka Giulio Paradisi – Fellini’s 8½), the film artfully fuses elements of some of the biggest blockbusters of the time (The Omen, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Fury, Star Wars, The Birds) and features a fittingly unique cast that includes Shelley Winters (Lolita), Glenn Ford (Superman), Lance Henriksen (Aliens), Franco Nero (Django), Mel Ferrer (War and Peace), Sam Peckinpah (director of The Wild Bunch) and, in the leading role, legendary director-actor John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown).